Setting up an Out of Office message

This guide will show you how to setup an out of office message for when you are on holiday, ill or for any other reason which means you are unable to work during regular working hours.

1. First, open Outlook, either by clicking the icon for Outlook in the taskbar or searching for it in the Windows search bar.

1. Next, click ‘File’ at the top left of the screen once Outlook opens.

1. This will then take you to the ‘Account Information’ section of Outlook, which has an option called ‘Automatic Replies (Out of Office)’, click said option.

1. Once in the ‘Automatic Replies’ box, select ‘Send automatic replies’.
2. Optionally, set a date range for your automatic replies. This will turn off automatic replies at the date and time you enter for the end time. Otherwise, you’ll need to turn off automatic replies manually.

1. On the ‘Inside My Organization’ tab, type the response that you want to send to teammates or colleagues while you are out of the office, ideally something like this ‘I am away from the office (on annual leave/give dates) with no/little access to my emails. If your email is urgent please call (insert number), otherwise I will respond on my return.’
2. Optionally, you can also send an out of office message to people outside of your organization, by clicking on the ‘Outside My Organization’ tab. 

1. It is recommended that if you turn this on to set it to ‘My Contacts only’, otherwise it will send it out to any incoming emails, whether that be spam or a newsletter, or any other random email. If set to ‘My Contacts only’ it will only send it to people, you have already had correspondence to and therefore would like to let them know you are out of office if they send you an email.

1. Select ‘OK’ to save your settings.
2. If you have added a date frame in which you are out of office, then you will not need to turn off the out of office replies as they will time out and turn themselves off after the dated window has finished. However, if you haven’t added a window of time for your out of office replies, you must go back into the ‘Automatic Replies’ settings and select ‘Do not send automatic replies’, for automatic replies to be turned off, once returning to the office.

To help colleagues and clients stay informed and supported while you're away, please ensure the following addition is included in your Out of Office (OOO) message for inside my organisation:

• The dates you'll be away and when you'll return
• Who to contact in your absence for urgent matters
• What to do if someone needs to send important post or legal documents to ensure your incoming post is being redirected or managed while you're away.

Example OOO message:

Thank you for your message. I’m currently out of the office and will return on [Date].  If your matter is urgent, please contact [Colleague’s Name] on [Email].

For time-sensitive post or legal documents, please send them to: [Colleague/Team Name]  I appreciate your patience and will respond as soon as I can after I return.